Welcome to Corbet's Inlet, North Carolina, where the teenagers act like adults and the adults act like teenagers. It's Griffin Connolly's favorite place in the world. And while she may not be good at making decisions when it comes to her own life, s...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Griffin spent all Sunday night and Monday morning fretting over what happened on Doc's boat, but it wasn't because she'd almost capsized a two hundred thousand dollar sailing yacht.
She'd apologized to Doc profusely about it, to which Doc had reassured her, profusely, "It happens, Griff. Don't worry about it, it wasn't your fault." Even Evan and Matty hadn't thought it was a big enough deal to tease her about.
So that left Charlie.
Griffin had assumed he was going to be furious when he got back onto the boat. He'd lost his sunglasses, and already had a visible bruise on the outside of his thigh from hitting the edge when he went overboard.
Instead, after Doc had gotten the sails situated again and they were heading back toward the sound, Charlie had spent the rest of the afternoon cracking jokes. He'd laughed about how he'd been 'catapulted' off the boat (which seemed like a bit of a stretch, come on); he'd been a good sport about his sunglasses, saying he wanted new ones anyway; and he'd even made some comments about how he would've reacted the same way had he been steering.
It was weird.
Now, twenty-four hours later, Griffin was still grinding on it while she manned the Tennis Hut. Her brain kept replaying the whole fiasco, and it was mainly because she'd found out Charlie was going on dates with Mary Kyle.
Which, what the hell was up with that? Griffin had not seen the jealousy over that coming. Like, at all. She hated herself for getting jealous. Hated the insecurity and resentment that came with being jealous. And it wasn't like she was in a position to have any say in who Charlie wanted to spend his time with. She'd done a spectacular job of making it seem like she wanted nothing to do with him this summer, period.
Still, if Griffin ever 'fessed up and was honest with herself......all the weird combinations of emotions she felt toward Charlie boiled down to one singular fact: she clearly liked him.
And that was infuriating.
She didn't want to have feelings for Charlie. It just kind of happened somewhere in the last month when she wasn't paying attention. She could just picture how smug he'd be if he knew Griffin had a crush on him now after he'd had such an obvious one on her four years ago. He'd know exactly how to hold that kind of twisted poetic justice over her head.
Speaking of.
Griffin still wasn't sure what was in it for Charlie with this whole Wake Forest thing. A weaker part of her hoped it had something to do with him maybe having some kind of feelings for her... Why else would he badger her about it so much? Unless he just liked being an all around asshole all the time?
Griffin groaned and pressed her forehead to the Tennis Hut counter, just as a doubles group was walking up to return their racquets. She smiled politely, even with the weird looks she got, then glowered after them once they were heading down the cobblestone path toward the Pro Shop.
